A Kirman pictorial carpet, Southeast Persia, circa 1900

This carpet depicts the goddess Pomona dancing to the music which Vertumnus, in the guise of a faun, is playing on his aulos. The scene is set in Arcadia, a Grecian mythical rural realm ruled by the god Pan.

The design is derived from a tapestry ‘Danse d’une nymphe, de la droite’, from a suite of eight tapestries originally made for Louis XIV at the Royal Gobelins Manufactory and known in contemporary documents as ‘Divers Sujets de Raphael’. The figures in this particular tapestry were based on drawings in the collection of Louis XIV, presumed by Raphael, but recently located and identified as by Guilio Romano. Three sets of the suite of eight were woven between 1686 and 1705 and of the versions of ‘Danse d’une nymphe, de la droite’, a first or second weaving is in the Chateau de Rohan, Strasbourg and the third weaving is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The other first or second weaving of ‘Danse d’une nymphe, de la droite’ was in the Jacques Leon Stern sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, November 3-4, 1950, lot 216, and again in The Collection Akram Ojjeh, Christie’s Monaco, 11th -12th December 1999, lot 150. Historically, the inspiration for the design of this carpet has been attributed to a tapestry belonging to Nasir al-Din Shah which reputedly hung in the Golestan Palace, possibly although not proven, the piece that later appeared at auction in New York and Monaco. Certainly, ‘Danse d’une nymphe, de la droite’ provided the model for the design. Other carpets with this design or its variants include one in The Carpet Museum of Iran in Tehran (No. 111), which has an additional group of putti, and various examples offered at auction, including Christie's New York, 12 December 2005, lot 50 and 13 April 2017, lot 246; Sotheby’s London 17 April, 2007, lot 25 and lot 36; Sotheby’s London, 8 October 2008, lot 348 and Sotheby's New York, 6 June, 2007, lot 267.